


The Prince of New Zealand

by TheTriggeredHappy



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Alternate Universe, Arranged Marriage, Comedy, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Prince of New Zealand AU, Romance, Royalty, look this is a batshit au from an already batshit canon timeline, this is fuckin ridiculous just dont worry about it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25582999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTriggeredHappy/pseuds/TheTriggeredHappy
Summary: What if the rocket launched with nobody in it and Sniper had to grow up trapped in a lab beneath the sea?(A series of ridiculous theoreticals stacked on top of one another to justify writing Sniper as being in a royal family to justify writing an arranged marriage Sniper/Scout prompt for my friend.)
Relationships: Scout/Sniper (Team Fortress 2), Sniper & Family
Comments: 9
Kudos: 42





	1. The Royal Family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [[Sniper is referred to as Mun-Dee since for obvious reasons he wouldn't go by Sniper, and the team itself doesn't exist because something something butterfly effect.]]

“—which is why we all need to escape from the planet at once before it is covered entirely by magma!” ****

The room was mostly silent, the only sound the very quiet voices of the translators speaking to their respective world leaders for a few moments. There was then a moment of full silence, which all at once transformed into laughter.

A few people weren’t laughing at all. One diplomat leaned to his translator and began to speak, and the translator started in as well. “I beg your pardon, Mister—“

“ _King,_ ” he corrected without a beat.

The translator sighed, then repeated the correction to his dignitary and started again. “ _King_ Bill-Bel, would you mind clarifying. Are you being entirely serious with us?”

“Of course! My calculations—“

“So you, the elected leader of the lost country of New Zealand,” the translator continued, speaking very slowly, “decided it was time to break almost forty years of complete silence and isolation, and attend this particular gathering of the UN, because you, both the elected leader and head scientific expert for your entire country, allegedly discovered that the world would be covered by magma in the near future? Am I correct in all of this?”

“Yes!”

More laughter from the room at large, several attempts at questions. The laughter and chatter died down as the man who had been sitting next to the king with the queen, whose head had been in his hands for the large majority of the time that the king was speaking, moved forward and shoved the king aside bodily to instead stand in front of the microphone, needing to tilt it down just a bit to speak into it.

“I’m his son,” he said firmly to the security personnel that tried to step forward. He then looked forward and addressed the larger room. “I’m… I’m the prince. My name is Mun-Dee, and I’m the king’s only son. And this man here—“ he pointed at the king, “—is a liar.”

Gasps across the room, muttering. The king tried to move forward again, but was stopped by his wife.

“He was not elected king, it’s a title he took by force and decided on by himself,” Mun-Dee said, voice firm. “Because ten years after our country went underwater, there was some kind of accident. We three, as far as we’re aware, are the only survivors.”

More alarm from the room at large, several dignitaries rising from their seats.

“I’m revoking the earlier request for a motion to collectively leave the earth and submitting a different one instead,” he said, giving a pointed glare to his father. “I’m requesting humanitarian aid and disaster relief funding to search the ruins for any other survivors and to recover any of the art or cultural treasures we can find.”

“You’re not the king!” Bill-Bel tried to interrupt, only to come across as more than a little bit whiny. “You don’t get to do that!”

Mun-Dee glared at him again. “Good luck getting any other funding now that they all know you’re a liar,” he said.

“Prince Mun-Dee,” called one translator. “Is this a sincere request?”

“Yes,” he replied, turning back to the room again. “It is. We need help. Please.”

The cacophony within the room had risen to the point where there was a larger call for a temporary recess. Mun-Dee found himself being escorted along with his mother and father forcefully from the room.

“Good on you, Mun-Dee,” his mom drawled as they were finally brought to a stop a little while away from the conference area, in one of the many large, ornate hallways of the building the UN conference was being held in. “Telling this idiot what’s what.”

“Well, you weren’t going to,” he replied, a little bitterly.

“Why did you do that?!” his dad all but shouted, shaking Mun-Dee by the shoulders forcefully. “Now the human race is _doomed_ , son, _doomed!”_

His arms were batted away with no small amount of disgust. “You’re a lunatic,” he snapped. “Why should they believe you, and why would they listen anyways even if you were right, which you _aren’t_ , because you’re a _lunatic?”_

“What gives _you_ the right to stand up and say _anything?”_ the king snapped right back. “First you didn’t want to wear the robes, next you’re shoving me! Right in front of all the other world leaders!”

“I already told you, I’m not wearing the robes. I’d look like an idiot.”

“Everyone _loves_ the robes! They’re fashionable!” Bill-Bel protested, picking at his own robe to demonstrate and gesturing at his wife’s.

“They’re ridiculous. Do you know how much everyone stared at me when I was wearing a robe in public? They were the second thing I bought once I got topside, right after food and before clean drinking water.”

“What about the sunglasses?”

“We live in a lab underwater, I’m still having trouble adjusting to sunlight and whatnot. Can you please go one day without grilling me over every little thing?”

“I’m the king, you’re the prince. That means _I’m_ in charge, not you! What I say goes!”

“Is that right?” Mun-Dee asked, voice dry. “Until when? Until you die? Because if it’s just you dying, we can go ahead and switch rulers as soon as I find a sharp object. Nobody would be able to put me in prison, what with you being the judge jury and executioner as well as king. Since _everyone else in our country is dead.”_

Bill-Bel looked appropriately scared of the threat, but blustered anyways. “You—until it—until you get married or engaged!” he blurted. “And have someone to rule with you!”

Mun-Dee narrowed his eyes. “Any world leader in their right mind would marry into the “royal family” if it meant inheriting New Zealand and all the cultural treasures in the ruins,” he said, lowering his voice as several other dignitaries were escorted into the hallway as well. “We haven’t given away our territory yet. Nobody would pass that up.”

“Except it can’t be a world leader!” Bill-Bel said quickly, getting desperate now. “Because it… keeps the bloodline clean!”

Mun-Dee dropped his head into his hands, sighing bodily. “Is that right?”

“And your mother’s the advisor to the king, so she gets to pick who it is!”

“Oh, for the love of—now why that one?!” he snapped.

Bill-Bel fidgeted with his sleeve. “Well, we… we just worry about you!”

“You can’t just make up any rule you want, Dad!”

“Yes I can, I’m the fucking king!”

Mun-Dee kneaded at his temples, sighing again, frustration mounting further. “Fine. Fine! Not that I have a choice anyways!” he muttered, tone sarcastic. “Mum, any ideas? Anyone who you’re just dying to marry me off to?”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “What, off the top of my head? I’ll need a minute, here.”

“Lar-Nah,” the king stage-whispered. “You’re meant to not pick anyone so we get to stay king and queen forever.”

“I’ve been queen for exactly two days and I already hate it, Bill-Bel. It’s either this or double regi-suicide.” She glanced around their immediate vicinity, eyes landing on the bodyguard standing nearby them. “Hey, you. Are you married?”

The guard had clearly been listening to the conversation, because he looked absolutely scandalized. “Uh. Yes, I have a wife and one daughter, your Majesty.”

“Damn.” She looked down the hall at the other people gathered, and her eyes landed on one of the translators, the person stood nearest to them. “Hey! You!”

The translator looked up, a bit surprised and visibly distasteful of them. “Yes? Can I help you?” he asked, voice tinted in a way that was immediately identifiable as French.

“Get over here, I have a question.”

“Mum, you’re not serious,” Mun-Dee said, horror rising in his chest as he realized what was going on.”

“Shut up, I’m a queen.” She turned her attention to the translator, looked him up and down. “Are you married?”

“Yes,” the translator said after a second, frowning at the question.

“Hmm. Do you have kids?”

“…Yes, several.”

“Are any of _them_ married?”

“Mum, you can’t just—“ Mun-Dee tried to cut in, but she raised a hand to stop him, still looking at the translator.

“Most of them,” was the reply. “Might I ask where this is going?”

“No,” she said. “Are any of the single ones…” She glanced at Mun-Dee. “…roughly between the ages of twenty-four and thirty-two?”

“Mum,” Mun-Dee tried to protest again, head in his hands.

“Below the age of thirty, please,” Bill-Bel chimed.

“Yes, one of them is.” The translator seemed to sense where this was going and his eyebrows rose for a moment. “My youngest _son_.”

“A son? Perfect, that was my next question,” Lar-Nah said, thumping her own son on the back, who looked very much like he was about to commit some form of treason. “Can you bring him here?”

“He and my wife are both in the city as well while I am on call for this conference, yes,” was the answer.

“Perfect. Do that.” She then waved the man off, who walked away, looking both confused and exasperated. “There you go. Found him a husband,” she said calmly. “Are we done? I want to go see what the bar is like.”

“I can’t believe you,” Mun-Dee said.

“Lar-Nah, now he’ll get to be in charge!” Bill-Bel whined, clearly upset.

“And you won’t. He can’t be any worse than you. And maybe he can actually get something done. Not like you’re smart enough or I care enough to do anything.”

Mun-Dee was quiet for a second before he forced himself to take a breath. “You know what? If that’s what this takes, then fine.”

* * *

“Excuse me,” one of the security guards said, standing at attention and stopping Mun-Dee as he entered the hotel that he and his family were meant to stay at along with many of the other officials. “You’re Prince Mun-Dee?”

“Yeah,” he replied, straightening up a little bit. “Uh… at ease?”

The guard shifted into parade rest. “Your Highness, the civilian you requested a meeting with has been searched and brought to your rooms. The guards who did the search reported finding a standard Swiss Army knife in his back left pocket, but otherwise nothing immediately dangerous.”

“Oh, thank you, that’s—“ He stopped for a minute. “Wait, my room? He’s in my room?”

“Yes, your Highness.”

Mun-Dee blinked a few times in shock, mouth moving soundlessly, and the guard started to look nervous.

“I’m sorry, your Highness, but Queen Lar-Nah gave us orders to take him to—“

“ _Mum_ ,” Mun-Dee groaned, head in his hands again. “God, okay. How freaked out was he?”

The guard’s confusion was only mounting. “Um. The civilian was relatively calm, your Highness.”

“No, be honest with me,” Mun-Dee said, giving the guard a look.

The guard shifted. “He was apparently extremely nervous and somewhat jumpy, your Highness,” he admitted.

“ _God._ Do you remember what they told him?”

“Apparently his father gave him a briefing on the way to the conference hall itself, your Highness. He was already nervous before he was frisked.”

Mun-Dee pushed his sunglasses up to knead the heels of his hands into his eyes, groaning. “Okay. Okay, I, okay. Thank you.”

“We have a guard on staff ready to escort you to—“

“No, I, I have a room key already. Thank you.”

The guard shifted uneasily. “Of course, your Highness,” he said, voice trailing off as Mun-Dee walked away.


	2. The Royal Fuck-Up

He stood outside his room for several long moments, key in hand, taking deep breaths, before he moved to open the door and enter.

“Alright, I’m going to preface by saying I’m _really_ sorry and I _absolutely_ wasn’t the one to suggest you go into my literal room and all,” he started in the moment he was through the threshold, working hard to keep his voice level. “I know this probably seems like some sort of, some sort of extremely creepy thing, but I _swear_ I just meant to meet you in some sort of extremely public area so you wouldn’t be uncomfortable—“

“Woah, woah, it’s okay,” he heard, halfway laughed, and managed to get the courage to look up at whoever the hell his mother had decided he was apparently going to _get married to_. And he was glad that the man kept talking, because his voice got stuck in his throat for a few moments. “Uh, your Majesty. Or—no, shit, your Highness. That’s what I’m supposed to call you, right? Or, wait, I’m not supposed to swear, fuck—shit—uh, _frick.”_

The man looking at him was, to put it frankly, very cute. His clothes fit him in a way that suggested some workable amount of muscle but probably not bodybuilding, and his hair was a little tousled on one side, and he had freckles on his face and on the visible parts of his arms, and he had a dimple when he smiled, and most notably he had these big cute front teeth that made him want to smile right back. He was sat on the little couch next to the dining table, cross-legged and vaguely casual while still clearly being some amount of nervous.

“It‘s alright,” he managed to say, waving off his apologizing quickly. “Uh.”

Silence for a second.

“I’m so sorry,” Mun-Dee said again. “This is probably bizarre.”

“I mean, yeah,” the guy shrugged. “But, y’know. It happens. Uh, your Highness.”

“You don’t need to call me that,” he said, waving it off again and instead holding out his hand. “You can just call me Mun-Dee. That’s my name.”

“Cool! You can call me Jeremy,” he said, standing and accepting the handshake, then looking Mun-Dee up and down once in a very obvious way. “Woah. You’re, uh, you’re really tall. Is everyone from New Zealand like that?”

“Yeah, actually, all three of us,” Mun-Dee said, a bit of sarcasm in his voice, and Jeremy frowned.

“Huh?”

Mun-Dee sighed heavily, sitting down on the couch and resting his elbows on his knees. He saw Jeremy sit as well in his periphery. “Well, you might’ve heard. New Zealand sunk itself into the ocean to make itself an isolated little utopia something like forty years ago. But what you probably didn’t hear is that ten years after that, a bit less than thirty years ago, there was some sort of accident. The dome broke, the entire place flooded. Everywhere except for one tiny little water-sealed laboratory. As far as we know now, there were only three survivors. My dad, my mum, and me.”

Jeremy gave a low whistle. “Wow.”

“Yeah.” He took a breath, pulled his sunglasses off to rub at his eye. “That was when I was just a baby, not quite a year old. Learning to crawl and all. Lucky I wasn’t outside of the lab when it happened.” He put his sunglasses on. “Regardless, that’s where I grew up, locked in a laboratory a few miles below the sea. Learned how to talk, learned to read—mostly taught myself with the books we had. Figured out how to access old archives and whatnot with some of the technology we had when I got bored of the old reading material. New Zealand and Australia apparently swapped technology for art back before the dome, before relations turned sour and we got somewhere near a nuclear war, we got some digital archives of old literature on tablets and the like, I ended up reading plenty of those.”

Jeremy was giving him a blank look at some of the terms he used, so he moved on, putting the sunglasses back onto his face.

“Anyways. My dad is an absolute lunatic, every few weeks he’d “discover” some new apocalypse that was about to happen,” he said, doing air quotes for emphasis. “And mum was just a drunkard and barely cared to correct him half the time, so most of my learning was self-taught and from finding videos and movies in the archives to get a grasp of what the world must be like. Then when I was about fourteen I figured out that there was something fishy about what my dad was always ranting about, and I found out that the world hadn’t actually ended up on the surface like he always said it had, and what happened to New Zealand, everything. By the time I was sixteen I was working on getting my dad to try and build a submarine, by the time I was eighteen I figured out that he’s also an idiot and that I’d be better off figuring out how to do it myself so we wouldn’t all die the second we got in the water because he forgot… I dunno, air or something.”

“Woah, you made a _submarine?”_ Jeremy asked, eyes wide now. “On your own?”

“Only took me a few years once I found some blueprints,” he agreed. “And it didn’t need to be much, just enough to get me topside, and to some sort of landmass. Then, when I was about twenty-three, I managed it, and ended up in Australia. There was a bit of an issue for a day or so before they figured out what to do with me. New Zealander shows up from the bottom of the ocean and all on a public beach, it… it caused some problems. Eventually the deal was made that I could stay for a little while as long as it was kept secret where I was from, and didn’t leave the town I was in, and as long as I left once they had a good submarine to send me back with. Spent six months there, then when I went back, spent years pestering my dad into letting us all leave for real. It took that long for my dad to figure out that he could just go ahead and call himself the Crowned King of New Zealand since there wasn’t anyone else alive who could contest him on it.”

Silence for a moment. “That’s it? He just—“

“Yeah.” Mun-Dee ran a hand through his own hair fretfully. “And I guess I just… I just wanted to tell you. So you’d know what you were getting into if you agreed to any of this.”

Silence again. He didn’t dare look up at Jeremy.

“I’m sorry, I should never had tried to bring anyone else into this—“ he hurried to say.

“No, no you’re fine, I just—“ Jeremy laughed, a little nervously. “I just, okay. So that _wasn’t_ some kind of joke.”

He couldn’t help but laugh too, the sound oddly infectious. “What kind of joke would that be?” he asked.

“I dunno, you tell me, what sounds more like a thing that happens to people, right? Either a prince from a goddamn fairytale lost city shows up and asks for your hand in marriage, or your asshole dad is playing a weird fucked up prank on you. Wouldn’t be the first time he tried to mess with me like that, he’s the worst.”

“The, er, translator?” Mun-Dee asked, just for confirmation’s sake.

“He’s not even a translator, that’s not even his job, he just got asked to come work as a translator because he knows a bunch of languages and stuff like that. He does some sorta other… whatever. International somethin’. I dunno. Good excuse to drive up to New York and all, though.”

“You’re American, then? You have an odd accent, don’t quite sound like it,” Mun-Dee said.

“Yeah, Boston, Massachusetts, it’s just sorta east from here. It’s in America, it—there’s a lot of American accents, big country and all. You’ve never heard an East Coast accent?”

“I live at the bottom of the ocean, there’s a lot of things that I don’t know,” Mun-Dee replied, a little bitterly, looking off at one of the decorations in the room. A pause. “Really, though. I… I know this will probably be a series of conversations and all, but… I, the offer is genuine. This—I’m serious. About…”

Silence. “About the whole marriage thing.”

His expression tightened. “Right. That.”

“Y’know, you’re gonna have to say it out loud at some point.”

He ran a hand down his face. “I know.”

“…And you’re gonna have to look at me at some point.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “I know.”

“Hey,” Jeremy said, and hesitated for a moment before putting a hand on his arm, and Mun-Dee’s eyes instantly were whipping around to look at the point of contact, more incredulous than startled. “Look, I, I’m just as confused as you are, here. Just… let’s talk about this, okay?”

He swallowed hard. “I just, I really am sorry to drag you into all this, and… full disclosure, I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. I’ve spent my entire life around exactly two other people and… and watching videos on screens, and reading, and trying to get a handle on what humanity is supposed to be like. First half of my life was spent…” He scratched idly below one ear, searching hard for his words. “…I spent years and years thinking we were the last people alive on the planet, and that meant that humans were absolutely done for, and… I’m no good at this. _Any_ of this.”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Jeremy said, moving to squeeze his shoulder, and it sent a wave of comfort through him unlike anything else. “Look, if anything this is just… real flattering, huh? And, y’know, at least my Ma will like you, you’re… tall, and real polite, and, can read. And this’ll, I dunno, really set me apart from all my brothers, showin’ up back home from a weekend trip with fuckin’… Prince Charming.”

He scoffed, felt himself starting to smile. “Hardly very charming.”

“Nah, you are, just in your own sorta… weird nerd way,” Jeremy assured, and thumped him on the shoulder. “Like, uh, like in movies when there’s… wait, you know movies, right?”

Mun-Dee made a see-saw motion with his hand. “If they came out about fifty years ago, sure,” he said.

“Hey, that can be a start!” Jeremy chimed, thumping him again. “We can go out and see some movies. That’s some classic first date material.”

“That’s real, then? Not… one of those things that gets made up for films and books and the like?” Mun-Dee asked hesitantly.

“Yeah! Movies kick ass. And comics and stuff, I’m _big_ into comics.”

Quiet for a second. “So we’ll go on a date, then?”

“Yeah. What, you think I’m gonna marry a guy without taking him on a date first?” Jeremy joked.

Mun-Dee shifted. “That’s… reasonable,” he acquiesced without fanfare. “Could you, er… is it off the table to… for you to just _say_ we’re engaged?”

Jeremy’s eyebrows rose.

“It’s just—one reason I’m doing this—“ and since when did it become just _one_ reason, not _the_ reason? “—I’m not allowed to take on the power to make official orders and the like until I’m engaged and “have someone to rule with”,” he said, doing air quotes.

Jeremy’s face screwed up as he tried not to laugh. Mun-Dee frowned. “No, no, just… that’s not how you do air quotes,” he said at the look.

Mun-Dee frowned further. “What?”

“You don’t fuckin’ wave your hands all over the place like that. You just sorta,” he said, and demonstrated a much more subdued version of the movement, hands just bobbing in front of him. “Like that.”

“Oh.” He felt his face heating up. “I’ve only ever seen my dad do them. And he does them like,” and he waved his arms around again.

“Yeah, well, he’s also totally batshit,” Jeremy laughed. His expression fell a little. “So I guess it’s probably a good idea for him to sorta… not be king anymore.”

Quiet for a second. “But you’re taking the idea seriously? You really are considering…” Mun-Dee trailed.

“I guess I am.”

“I—“ he started, and had to take a breath to find the right words. “I just wanted to reiterate, you… there’s not much to gain from all this. You’d be marrying into a kingdom of absolutely nothing. This doesn’t come with… with political power, or financial stability, it would mostly just come with a good bit of media attention and… and teaching me how the world works, and traveling, and… talking to all sorts of people.”

“Hey, I like attention and I love to talk,” he shrugged.

“How much do you know about world politics, exactly?” Mun-Dee asked.

“Not a lot,” Jeremy admitted. “But my dad knows all sorts of shit. He could probably tag in, help with some of that stuff.”

A pause. “And I don’t know how much you’ll be seeing of me, I imagine this might have… a lot of work involved, a lot of sleepless nights. Research and the like. And I’m not terribly interesting.”

“You live at the bottom of the ocean,” Jeremy deadpanned.

“That’s not a good thing!” he protested, a little weakly.

“C’mon,” Jeremy laughed, and leaned in, cupped his cheek, and it stole the breath directly out of Mun-Dee’s lungs. “Quit trying to talk me out of this before I’ve even agreed to it all the way. I’m tellin’ you, first date. If we figure out that we hate each other on the date then, hell, I’ll just be on the books as the guy you’re engaged to long enough for your dad to go fuck off, and you can find somebody else.”

“Right,” he said, exhaled. “Right.”

A pause, Jeremy’s hand dropping from his cheek to instead thread their fingers together idly. “Hey, what’s the deal with titles, anyways? If you’re gonna be king, would that just make me… other king? King Two?”

“Technically I wouldn’t be king until my mum and dad both die,” he corrected lightly.

“Prince Two?”

“I think the title would be Consort, Prince Consort then King Consort,” he replied. “You’d probably start going by Prince Jeremy.”

“And, uh, if we figure out like months down the line that… I dunno, you’re like, allergic to all the shit I like and we can’t put up with each other anymore, what’s the plan there?”

Mun-Dee considered the question. “I suppose you’d be the Prince Consort at that point. You could make up whatever rules you please in terms of divorce and the like. I won’t fight you on it, I, I know this is already… a lot to be agreeing to in the first place.”

“Eh,” he shrugged. “I mean, it was this or go out to dinner with my mom and shitty dad for more “family bonding” bullshit,” he said, only using one hand for air quotes to leave the other one tangled with Mun-Dee’s. “Prince Charming sounds like a way better deal to me.”

“You’re,” he started to say, and couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled forth to interrupt him. “I, I suppose that’s fair.”

A pause. “Hey, if stuff goes well, you’re gonna need to _actually_ propose, by the way,” he added. “With a ring and stuff.”

“Right. Also fair.”

“And—“ he started to say, paused, “—and I already sorta promised one of my brothers that he gets to be best man at my wedding eventually, so, we’ll have to figure that out. Whether we both have best men, or what the deal is.”

“As of right now I know exactly two blokes and one of them is you and the other is my dad,” Mun-Dee deadpanned.

“Right. Bottom of the ocean.” A pause. “Y’know, I never thought about the best man thing being an issue until just now.”

“Never thought about weddings much?”

Jeremy laughed, but there wasn’t much humor in it. “More like… the liking guys thing being kinda… new.”

A pause. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Just—only just started figuring that out a few months ago.” Another pause. “So what I’m saying is that I don’t really know what I’m doing here either. We’re both kinda rookies.”

“Well,” he tried to say, but he didn’t exactly have much experience comforting people, so it took a little while to find the right words. He took a moment to squeeze Jeremy’s hand. “Well, first date first.”

Jeremy exhaled, not quite a sigh. “Yeah.”

“Then whatever comes after that… after that.”

“Yeah.”

A pause. “Sorry.”

He laughed. “What are you sorry for?”

“I’m… a mess at this. I’ve… bottom of the ocean, I’ve never… dated. Or had friends. Or talked to anyone besides my mum and dad. This’ll take some getting used to.”

Jeremy leaned his elbow up on the back of the couch, propping his head on his hand. “Man. I, I really just can’t fuckin’ imagine. I think I would’ve just thrown myself out into the ocean. I would’ve lost my mind.”

Mun-Dee shrugged. “Well, I never exactly knew anything else. If anything… this, all this,” he said, gesturing around them, “this was far too much for me for a while. Too bright, too loud, too… the first time I saw the sky, it scared the hell out of me. Something so _big_. I didn’t have any concept of what _big_ was until I saw the sky that first time.”

Jeremy had an expression on his face that he didn’t really know how to read, but there was an amount of smile there, so he figured it wasn’t something to get worried about.

“I think… assuming I don’t spent the whole rest of my life working on trying to unearth the ruins and fix whatever I can, assuming I have a break,” he immediately self-corrected. “If I ever get the chance, I think I want to travel. Not much variety down under the ocean, I think I want to go different places and… eat different sorts of food and the like. See what forests are like. And animals, I’d like to meet all sorts of animals. Not fish. I’ve decided I hate fish.”

Jeremy laughed. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I—I’ve decided I like dogs a lot. When I went topside the first time, I got to see a dog. It was so _friendly_. Soft, too.”

“Y’know, I’m, this is a real trip,” Jeremy said, still wearing that odd expression. “Because you go from these big philosophical things and all about like, responsibility, to like… getting really hyped about dogs. It’s, you’re, you know you’re adorable, right? You know you’re the best?”

Mun-Dee felt a smile pulling at his face. “Am I?”

“Yeah. What kind of dog was it?” he asked, going back to the topic at hand.

He frowned. “…Grey? And white?” he said slowly.

Jeremy’s smile widened. “Oh my god. Okay. So, hey, Prince Charming, did you know that there’s different kinds of dogs? Big ones, small ones, fluffy ones…?”

“How big?” Mun-Dee asked, frowning further.

He thought for a second before he held his hands apart. “Like, maybe this big, longways?” he said, as if he wasn’t holding his hands a good meter apart.

“And how small?” he asked next, taken aback.

“Oh, like,” Jeremy said, now holding his hands less than a foot apart. “Like, tiny.”

“So horse-sized to cat-sized?” he tried, entire world shaken by this new information.

Another pause. “How big do you think a horse is?”

He held his hands about a meter apart.

“I’m _pretty sure_ that’s not it,” Jeremy said, visibly trying very hard not to laugh. “Okay. So date number two, I’m taking you to a zoo to see some animals.”

“Already on the second date?” Mun-Dee asked, starting to smile again despite the embarrassment clouding in his chest.

“I get the feeling that the first one’s gonna go well. You’re pretty cute,” he shrugged, smiled.

“How do dates work, exactly?” he asked, already feeling ridiculous for having to ask.

A laugh. “Man, I dunno. You go do somethin’ together, and talk about all sorts of stuff, and hold hands and maybe kiss at the end. And… I mean, maybe more than that, but I’m, y’know. When it comes to real dating, that’s not really a first date sorta deal. I was gonna say I’m classier than that, but… I mean, y’know. Stuff happens.”

Mun-Dee laughed, only a tiny bit nervously. “Right?”

“Hey, look, you’re super new at this,” he was quick to assure, “I’ll try and take stuff slow. Show you the ropes on everything. As slow as you need to. I, I know I’ve got kind of an issue with rushing stuff and fucking things up, so, I’m gonna need you to tell me if I’m being… I dunno, too much? Too quick?”

“Right.”

“If… I’m serious, if you start getting overwhelmed or start feeling weird about stuff, you gotta say somethin’. I’m pretty great and all, but I’m not the brightest sometimes. And, you’ve never done any of this stuff before, and I don’t wanna freak you out.”

He swallowed hard, averting his eyes. “Right, I, I’ll try my best. I… but I also don’t really have… any concept of how fast things are meant to be? I’d hate to be far too slow and bore you to death.”

“Hey, that’s fine. I’d rather you be chill and take things slow than freak yourself out.”

“And if I take things too fast?” he asked slowly.

Jeremy looked at him. He started to grin. “You think that’s gonna be an issue?” he asked.

He shrugged aimlessly, glancing away again. “I just… I can’t be sure,” he said. “Not sure how much of this is meant to be… something I want, but should wait for.”

“What‘ve you got in mind?” he grinned.

He had to really fight to get the words unstuck from his throat. “Well, I guess it’s just that I’ve spent my whole life under the ocean and I’ve been wondering for a long time what kissing must be like,” he murmured to the carpet, “I’d really like to try that, but you just said you don’t feel like rushing things and all—“

He was cut off by a hand on his cheek, turning his face up and over, and then he was being kissed, just like that.

It…

The word he would use to describe kissing when he thought back on it later was “good”. At the time, he didn’t call it much of anything, because his entire brain felt like it was shutting down.

Now, Mun-Dee didn’t exactly have a lot of life experiences. On the way to the UN meeting a car had suddenly honked nearby where he was walking and it had been literally the scariest thing to happen to him in his entire life. The best meal he’d ever had was picked up from a tiny eatery in the town he’d been confined to during the very short amount of time he’d spent topside in Australia. The best joke he’d ever heard was told to him by a particularly brave child in the airport who’d wandered over to talk to him about the strange old people in the robes that he was clearly traveling with. He had practically no real context for anything going on in the world around him, and he was well aware of that. So it wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy kissing Jeremy—or being kissed by Jeremy, more like, because he was scared to death of making any mistakes and let Jeremy take the lead for the most part—it was just that he literally didn’t have the vocabulary to express how much he liked it.

It was overwhelming. He didn’t want it to stop.

“Well, there you go,” Jeremy said simply once he’d pulled back, and when had he closed his eyes? He blinked them open. Jeremy was smiling. “Now you know.”

Quiet for a few moments. “Can you do that again?” Mun-Dee asked, a little weakly.

Jeremy smiled and leaned back in.

He’d read enough books and seen enough films to be aware that this wasn’t even particularly… _impassioned_ kissing. It was rather chaste, overall. Subtle presses of lips, a hand on his cheek, the other on his shoulder for balance. Eventually, between kisses, he tangled the hand on his shoulder with his own, and laid a hand on Jeremy’s shoulder to help keep him steady instead. At some point Jeremy started fiddling with his hair, and that felt very extremely nice. He enjoyed that a lot. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do if he ever had to combine the feeling of kissing with some other second sensory input. He was fairly sure his entire brain would shut down and he would drop dead.

Mun-Dee felt a little disappointed when Jeremy pulled away a bit more, a slight pressure to the push pack just to indicate that he was pulling back for a little while now. “Y’know, for someone so new at this, you’re really not terrible,” he said, a little surprised, but his tone largely humorous.

He took a moment to get the breath back in his chest. “Well… lots of… reading romance stories and the like, watching films,” he managed, brain in a fog.

Jeremy was still playing with his hair.

“One more?” Mun-Dee asked, tone weak.

A little laugh. “Fine, one more,” he said, and leaned back in again.

When he started pulling back, he couldn’t help but murmur it again, “One more?”, as earnest as he could manage with his mind muddled. And that got him quite a few more, easy minutes, world falling into a haze, narrowed down to the feeling of fingers entwined with his own, and carding through his hair, and the fabric of Jeremy’s shirt under his hand, and warmth, and pressure.

“Okay, okay, take it easy there Tiger,” Jeremy laughed finally, and put a hand on his chest to guide him to sit back again. At some point, he’d wound up leaned forward considerably. He wasn’t sure when. “Save it for the date.”

He opened his mouth to respond, but it took a second for words to catch back up with him. “Sorry,” he managed. “I just… like this a lot. Like _you_ a lot.”

A laugh again. He was really starting to like how laughs sounded. Not his dad’s laugh when he was off on some insane tangent, or his mom giggling drunkenly, just this kind. The kind that meant he’d made Jeremy feel happy for a little bit. “Good.”

“Do… I’m sorry, I’m sure you probably have other things to do today,” he said. That was once concept that he’d picked up on pretty quickly, that people generally had things that they needed to do.

“I mean, I’m sure my Ma’s gonna start worrying about me at some point,” he said, leaned to get a look of the clock hanging on the wall. “But I’ve got a little more time.”

“You could… tell me more about yourself,” Mun-Dee offered hopefully. “What sort of things you like.”

“Well… yeah, okay. How much do you know about baseball?”

It would be a good few hours before Jeremy finally ended up leaving. Mun-Dee was fascinated with everything that he had to talk about, with what the world was apparently like, with how sports really worked, with movies, with actors, with music. And, according to Jeremy, it turned out that Mun-Dee was a good person to talk to. A good listener. Mostly he found himself hanging off of every detail he was told, distantly fascinated by the feeling of a hand in his own. At one point Jeremy had an arm up around his shoulder, and that was its own situation for a little while, him just attempting to push down the flurry of emotions that rose in his chest.

He was smart enough not to say anything about it, though. He was aware that it would be extremely sad if he admitted that he couldn’t remember the last time somebody held him, if ever. Surely it had to have happened when he was a small child, but he really, truly couldn’t remember. It was far nicer than he could put into words.

But despite what he wanted deep down in his heart, he knew he couldn’t just trap the man here to use as a teddy-bear, and he didn’t argue the matter when Jeremy eventually glanced at the clock again and realized, shit, he really needed to get going before his Ma started freaking out.

He was walking Jeremy to the door when it occurred to him. “When—when would you like to go on that date?” he asked, almost abruptly.

“Well, there’s a couple more days left in the conference and stuff,” he said, tugging at his own jacket idly as he thought. “But I’m in New York until next weekend. How about, uh, Monday? Then we can figure out the next one at the end of that. Here—“ He leaned over to the table by the door, picked up the pen and pad of paper there, wrote something down. “That’s, uh, that’s the hotel I’m at, and room number. You can call and we’ll figure out what time and stuff, and I’ll find out what movies they’ve got playing.”

“Alright,” he agreed. “I’ll—I’ll call you.”

“Cool,” Jeremy nodded. A pause, then he was kicking up onto his toes and planting a kiss on his cheek. “See ya.”

“Bye.”

And then Jeremy was off down the hallway, and he was closing the door, and he was alone.

He breathed in, breathed out. Walked over to his bed—it was massive, bigger than any bed he’d ever seen in his life, not that that was saying much. He picked up a pillow, and buried his face in it, and yelled.

He could _not_ believe that this was happening.

Did he have to be good-looking? Did he have to have such a nice laugh? Did he have to be funny, and sweet, and concerned about taking things too fast and making him uncomfortable even though they’d literally just met? Mun-Dee had spent a good portion of the time that he was getting baseball explained to him half-preoccupied by thinking about how cute Jeremy’s teeth were. And he had freckles—freckles! He’d half thought that they weren’t real, or were something fake that people put on, like makeup, but they were all over his arms and hadn’t smudged when Mun-Dee had smoothed them under his hand. And he had callouses on his hands, and promised to introduce Mun-Dee to his mum’s cat, whose name was apparently Meatball and who was allegedly bright orange and dumb as all hell. No, his mum just _had_ to _randomly pick_ a very attractive young man with a good sense of humor and opinions on just about everything under the sun.

And he had an argument with himself for a little while, because he was well aware that he probably wasn’t in love with the man already. It was just the first time he’d ever spoken to someone besides his parents for a length of time, and Jeremy just also happened to be attractive and willing to go on a number of dates with him. They’d only just met, he was being ridiculous.

But if this was just a crush, just an infatuation or a fascination, then how was he meant to handle it when he fell in love someday? This was already almost too much for him to handle.

He took a deep breath. It didn’t work very well, so he took the pillow off of his face and tried again. It worked much better.

Just… just try the first date, he told himself. And then whatever happens next, happens.

He couldn’t get the feeling of a hand in his own out of his head.

God, he was a dead man.


End file.
